Bottle Filler questions

[Foreshot]

Starting to look into bottle fillers. Volumetric, level, etc. I'm looking for 4-6 bottles at a time.

- Biggest question is: What is least likely to get me in trouble with a TTB audit?

- Level vs Volumetric: For aesthetics I would prefer the level, but is it a real issue with the Volumetric? 

- Any best practices for reliable, repeatable & accurate process? 

- Any other knowledge you can impart? 

Thanks everyone

[mjduheme]

no expert, but from my point of view when bottles look to be filled to the same point nobody will speak up and tip off the TTB to a potential problem

That said,  I took the TTB chart and filled five bottles by weight for the given proof and they were all within 1mm of each other.  So we just fill to the same point for each bottle.  

[Foreshot]

As in:

Is this https://morewinemaking.com/products/wine-bottle-filler-deluxe-5-spout.html accurate enough to ward off any TTB issues?

Or do I need to go full fledged Mori/XpressFill? 

[Tom Lenerz]

Variance of fill with a level filler is going to be impacted by the quality of your glass. Glass produced by a discount manufacturer is more likely to have higher variance in fill volumes than that of a higher quality producer. At least that has been my experience. The TTB does have a pretty wide allowable variance in fill volumes, and you need to test and record those tests every bottling. They want to see an approximately equal number of over and under fills. 

However the quality of a level filler may also affect the consistency of visual fill level. Our rotary monoblock has a 16 head filler, but every bottle is ran through the same leveler after being filled. This minimizes the variance of the visual fill levels, and our glass quality has shown us very consistent fill volumes when the fill levels are the same.